https://nationalinterest.org/feature...rregular-29672

The Future of Warfare is Irregular
These realities suggest that competition between the United States and its main adversaries will likely be irregular—not conventional.
by Seth Jones

America’s adversaries are unlikely to compete with the United States directly in a series of set-piece battles. Instead, they will likely continue to engage in cyber, proxy and information campaigns. Thus far, the United States has failed to compete effectively in this field, except for some efforts by U.S. special operations forces. Washington has been far too reactive, defensive, and cautious—not to mention discordant among multiple U.S. government agencies. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have embraced irregular warfare. But the United States has not. It isn’t too late to adjust course.
It has been awhile since I provided an update to this, and Seth Jones’ recent article provides an opportunity to reopen the discussion. Jones argues our adversaries / competitors will likely continue to resort to irregular or more accurately non-conventional strategies to pursue their strategic aims, while our current focus on building a superior conventional and nuclear capability fails to address the gaps in our ability to protect our interests in competition short of traditional armed conflict, also known as the gray zone. He is not opposed to a conventional force build up and modernizing our nuclear forces, but correctly points out our adversaries can still defeat us (undermine our strategic interests) if we fail to address their use of what we call irregular warfare.

While Jones did a good job of advocating for the U.S. to enhance its irregular warfare (IW) capabilities throughout the military (especially SOF), the CIA, and other government agencies, he fails to identify how these capabilities would be used to achieve desired ends. He clearly is talking about a much more comprehensive form of IW, than the narrow view of conceived in response to our protracted conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. He is focused on the full range of irregular or unconventional activities (what Kenan calls political warfare) that can be executed unilaterally and through proxies. Unfortunately, he fails to describe how these capabilities and ways would be employed to achieve strategic ends. While old time SOF operators would say it is obvious, the articles is focused on convincing conventional military leadership on the need to ramp up our IW capabilities, not downsize them.

He recommendations include the need to educate our public on how our adversaries use irregular warfare. Presumably this will enhance our resilience and generate the political will to counter it once it is recognized as a strategic threat. Second, professional education at military schools need to add more irregular warfare topics to the curriculum. In my view, most military education in this area is tied to faulty strategic approaches for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. One is focused on the non-strategic tactical approach of find, fix, finish to defeat terrorism, where we have 17 plus years of tactical success and strategic failure, and the other naively assumes the center of gravity is always the local populace to defeat an insurgency. That view was questionable during Cold War, and even more so now when various external actors can continue to leverage proxies strategically regardless of the populace’s leanings. For great power competition, the educational curriculum needs to address unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, cyber, and other topics at the strategic level, which was actually his third recommendation (reduce the focus on counterterrorism).

It is a good article, but one that I hope he follows up on with an article on how the U.S. government and military would employ irregular warfare to achieve strategic ends in the 21st Century. We can’t repeat the Cold War, the strategic environment has changed too much. We’re now in a multipolar world that is increasingly interdependent economically, which results in more limitations, but perhaps also more opportunities.